Ash Wednesday Conference 2004
Introduction
In this conference I wish to reflect on Benedict's chapter 49, "The Observance of Lent." Benedict has written a little masterpiece in that it takes what could be negative and harsh and puts out a positive, evocative vision of what we are trying to do with Lent.
Lent as joyful vigilance
While the purpose of Lent in the Rule of the Master is vigilance, for Benedict it is joy in vigilance. We need to note the use of the word gaudium because it is used twice in this chapter and is found nowhere else in the Rule. This is counterintuitive because we do not typically associate joy with the practices of Lent. Benedict is speaking here of the "joy of spiritual desire," and this desire is focused on Holy Easter.
On a personal note, what I have loved about being in this monastery is that from day one, there has never been a doubt in my mind about the centrality of Easter, and the centrality of the mystery of Christ's resurrection. For Benedict, no other feast or observance may supplant the Pasch. Lent is important but it depends on Easter for its meaning and focus. This "joy of holy desire" is not dependent on the fickleness of our day-to-day emotional ride . but is rooted in the "joy of the Holy Spirit." It is worthwhile to note the parallelism of this phrase with the "joy of spiritual desire."
In designating this "joy of spiritual desire" as the energizing force for the Lenten observance Benedict is following the rich patristic reflection on desire, on "desiderium."
To desire something or someone is to long for a union not yet achieved. Yet longing itself is already shaping our life, focusing our energies and imagination, drawing us in a given direction. It is already part of our heart. By speaking of the "joy of holy desire" Benedict is speaking about an inner attitude, our internal disposition. To be full of desire means not being immersed in the present moment, but alert and wakeful for the arrival of another.
This kind of joyful watchfulness will inform a positive asceticism. It necessarily means turning away from things that split our attention. This is not a rejection of the material world but a way of attaining "purity of heart."
Benedict's spiritual practices for Lent
Benedict does not round up the usual suspects for his construction of Chapter 49. While he does draw on the Master for some elements, he is not dependent on John Cassian or Augustine for material. Rather he draws on the Lenten sermons of Pope Leo I, sermons that were not intended for monks but for the local Roman Church community. This debt tends to give this chapter a pastoral tone. I wish to list the key elements of asceticism -- that Benedict encourages. He urges us to wash away the negligences of other times in this holy season. The metaphor of washing has a strong resonance for we all know what it is like to take a shower after sweaty, hard work. It is renewing and life-giving. This is what Lenten asceticism should do for us.
Then, to restrain ourselves from all evil habits.
To devote ourselves to prayer with tears.
To devote ourselves to reading, that is, to lectio divina.
To devote ourselves to compunction of heart and self denial.
Let each one deny himself some food, some drink, some sleep, some chatter, some joking, and let him await Holy Easter with the joy of spiritual desire.
Note that Benedict is aware that the focus of Lenten spiritual practice will be different for each person.
On the one hand, we do some things in common, for example, fasting in the dining room. But there are other areas of our life where each one of us has to reflect on his own life and where the "negligence of other times" is.
Benedict points us to Holy Easter, to the celebration of the dying and rising of Jesus. For Saint Paul death is the result of sin. One of the things we have to do in order to grow into the resurrection of Jesus Christ is to get clearer on the impact that sin has in the life of each one of us.
For Paul sin is much more than a series of individual acts. It is a kind of collective force or power that is allied with death and distorts our human conscience, our emotional, cognitive, and spiritual imagination. In addiction language, sin is "stinkin' thinkin." Sin immerses us in a life of false choices and blunted sensitivity to the needs and beauty of the people of the world around us. To look forward to the joy of Holy Easter surely includes reflection on what put Jesus on the Cross — human sinfulness. What part of my life needs to die with Jesus on the Cross this year?
Lectio divina, reflection, journaling, service, each of these can bring us to a clearer sense of where we need conversion and repentance in our lives.
Dispossession
I tend to think of getting rid of "stuff," clothing that I no longer need, and other things that take up space, as a good way to let go, to reduce the clutter in my life. Part of attaining purity of heart is realizing what we need and what we don't. One of the major "negligences of other times" in our culture is surely the habit of consumption and acquisition. Checking these two vices is surely a move towards freedom.
Exercise
Making the sacrifice to make sure that we get exercise into each week at an appropriate level is a spiritual practice. Getting regular exercise can strengthen our daily commitment to the monastic life if it is integrated with all the other elements of monastic life. Some of this is discipline, the root word for disciple. It is discipline that enables us to be open to conversion, that is, to understand in a small way the changes I need to make so that real change may occur. Just to reassure those of you who are concerned that working out is another take on the Pelagian heresy, I am assuming that we live in a graced universe.
Some thoughts on fasting
One of the uniting practices for Catholics used to be fasting and abstinence. As Eamon Duffy notes in a recent Tablet article, these dietary practices were thoroughly Catholic, they defined one as Catholic. This practice of fasting cut across all educational and economic lines. The Church let go of this practice because it was thought that badly instructed husbands could beat their wives on a regular basis while abstaining from meat on Fridays and still think of themselves as "good Catholics." In others, it was a battle against externalization.
What was needed was real Christianity, a spiritual sort of religion that did not need the crutch of practice. So for most Catholics fasting is now confined to two days of the year, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. And most Catholics probably do not even remember these two days anymore. What was a dominant Catholic identifier is gone.
The theological and practical shift represented by this abandonment of an ancient part of the tradition was not merely a matter of theological emphasis. It was also more than a question of whether ascetical exercises like fasting are good for the character. What was also at stake was the Church's prophetic integrity: its claim to solidarity with the poor.
Considered from this perspective, compulsory fasting and abstinence, practiced regularly, routinely and in common, was a recognition by the Church that identification with the poor and the hungry, with those who knew themselves needy before God because they were needy among humankind, was not an option for Catholics but a necessary and definitive sign of their redemption, as essential in its way as attendance at Mass.
The Church has always linked personal asceticism and the search for holiness with this demand for mercy and justice to the poor; the Lenten trilogy of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving is both fundamental and structural.
By making fasting and abstinence optional, the Church forfeited one of its most eloquent prophetic signs. There is a world of difference between a private devotional gesture, the action of the specially pious, and the prophetic witness of the whole community, the matter-of-fact witness, repeated week by week, that to be Christian is to stand among the needy. When the American bishops abolished the practice in 1967, they offered a powerful and sympathetic discussion of the religious reason for the old observance. They urged American Catholics to continue the observance as a gesture of solidarity with, and gratitude for, the Passion of Christ, as an act of fidelity to the Christian past, and to help "preserve a saving and necessary difference from the spirit of the world."
The whole rationale of symbolic gestures such as fasting requires that they disrupt and disturb the secular order. Their power to witness — not only to others but to ourselves — comes precisely from their awkwardness. The abolition of such observances diminishes the sense of tradition, the distinctive language of belief.
Catholic value cannot be sustained without its proper symbolic expression. Spiritual needs are expressed in physical needs. People can know their fundamental neediness, which is the foundation of faith, only if they feel their involvement with those who fast because they truly have nothing to eat.
Trudy the Bag Lady
Some years ago Jane Wagner and Lili Tomlin joined forces on the one woman show "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe." One of Tomlin's major characters is Trudy the Bag Lady, who is now a street person. But she was once a famous advertising consultant. She gives a description of what finally pushed her over the edge.
"I told 'em what drove me crazy was my last creative consultant job, with the Ritz Cracker mogul, Mr. Nabisco. It was my job to come up with snack inspirations to increase sales. I got this idea to give Cracker Consciousness to the entire planet.
I said, "Mr. Nabisco, sir! You could be the first to sell the concept of munching to the Third World. We got an untapped market here! These countries got millions and millions of people who don't even know where their next meal is coming from. So the idea of eatin' between meals just never occurred to 'em. I heard myself sayin' this! That must've been when I went off the deep end."
Some practical considerations
The Peace and Justice committee has recommended that our monastic community observe a fast on Wednesdays and Fridays during the season of Lent. In the past, this has meant a simple noon and evening meal on Wednesdays and three simple meals on Fridays. The money we save is given to needy people. In addition, I urge you to use your computer to go the website www.thehungersite.com By going to this website each day, you can simply click on a prompt and the advertisers who support this homepage will donate a cup of rice that day to a hungry person. As a community and as a culture we have to have a working, daily awareness of the one billion people who do not have enough to eat each day.
Conclusion
Whatever we do this Lent, when it is rooted in the "joy of the Holy Spirit," it ought to, and it will, take us deeper into the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ.
Abbot John Klassen, OSB
February 25, 2004
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